1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording and reproducing apparatus, and more particularly to an apparatus for controlling recording and reproduction operations by using additional information relating to a status of the apparatus during reproduction.
2. Related Background Art
Conventionally, a recording and reproducing apparatus such as a video camera is structured so as to record image information obtained by photographing, and audio information corresponding to the image information (hereinafter, image information and audio information are referred to as “image/audio information”), together with additional information, onto a recording medium.
Here, examples of the additional information include: photographing information such as an image pickup date/time, exposure, shutter speed, and a photographing mode; apparatus main unit information such as a camera-type, a lens-type, and the like; and apparatus setting information such as an apparatus environment setting.
Examples of usages for the additional information include displaying the additional information in a display unit when in a reproduction mode of the recording and reproducing apparatus, so that a user can confirm the photographing information, and recording the additional information onto the recording medium together with the image/audio information, to thereby save the photographing information corresponding to the image/audio information.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 07-99605 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 5,581,362) discloses a technique for recording the additional information at the time of photographing in this way together with the image information and using the additional information to extract a search image during reproduction.
Incidentally, in recent years, the amount of information involved in image/audio information to be recorded onto the recording medium is increasing due to increased image quality and image size, and the like. Further, due to advances in semiconductor technology, the recording capacity of the recording medium is increasing rapidly.
For example, with respect to card-type recording media, products capable of 128 megabytes and 256 megabytes have appeared; with respect to magneto-optical disks, recording capacities of several gigabytes have been achieved at an inexpensive price; and with respect to hard disks, recording capacities of several tens of gigabytes have been achieved at an inexpensive price. In this way, as the recording capacity of the recording medium increases, recording processing time of the recording and reproducing apparatus is increasing each day.
Further, as the recording medium, instead of magnetic tape or other such tape-type recording media used frequently up until now, card-type recording media using semiconductor memory and disk media such as hard disks and magneto-optical disks are frequently used. These card-type and disk-type recording media do not require rewinding and forwarding operations as in the conventional tape-type recording media, and thus high-speed data access is possible. Also, random access is possible which has been impossible with the tape-type recording media. Accordingly, with respect to access speed of the recent card-type and disk-type recording media, a speed is achieved at which simultaneous recording and reproducing is possible.
Further, the card-type and disk-type recording media do not require a tape loading mechanism that has been necessary in the tape-type recording medium.
Therefore, with this type of card-type and disk-type recording media, it is possible to achieve a mechanism which can be simply attached to and removed from the apparatus, and thus it is anticipated that they will also become widely popular as removable media used in video cameras etc.
In this way, when the recording capacity of the recording medium increases, the recordable amount of information also increases correspondingly, and this requires much time to reproduce all the information recorded on the recording medium.
Further, for example, a reproduced portion (a picked-up scene) which the user wants to actually view, is generally a portion of all the information recorded on the recording medium. Therefore, a method for the user to accurately retrieve the desired scene, or creation of a program for optimal viewing, is needed. However, up until now, such could not be achieved.